To improve the resolution in the downrange direction in radar cross section (RCS) measurements, the frequency bandwidth must be widened. Therefore, to measure the RCS at high resolution in a limited frequency bandwidth, we proposed a technique that applies the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm and obtains the profile in the downrange direction. However, an experimental evaluation still has not been conducted in an outdoor RCS test range of an actual electromagnetic wave propagation environment. In this paper, we evaluated this method by positioning two cylindrical or cubic measurement targets as scatterers of radio waves in the downrange direction and conducted RCS measurements outdoors. The results verified an improvement in the downrange resolution of about threefold compared to a conventional Fourier transform and the effectiveness of this measurement method. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 89(6): 23–31, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.20272 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]